THE CHOCOLATE WAR Quote #6

From chapter 16:

“Worse than that, however, he had allowed Brother Leon to blackmail him. If teachers did this kind of thing, what kind of world could it be?”

- Robert Cormier The Chocolate War

THE CHOCOLATE WAR Quote #5

From chapter 15: “The world was made up of two kinds of people -- those who were victims and those who victimized.”

- Robert Cormier The Chocolate War

THE CHOCOLATE WAR Quote #4

From chapter 10: “There was nothing more beautiful in the world than the sight of a teacher getting upset.”

- Robert Cormier The Chocolate War

THE CHOCOLATE WAR Quote #3

From chapter 3:

“Why? someone had scrawled in a blank space no advertiser had rented. Why not? Someone else had slashed in answer.”

- Robert Cormier The Chocolate War

THE CHOCOLATE WAR Quote #2

Capturing the delicate balance between depravity and sweetness in adolescence: “The one devastating sorrow he carried within him was the fear that he would die before holding a girl’s breast in his hand.”

- Robert Cormier The Chocolate War

LORD OF THE FLIES Quote #1

From Chapter VII: "By now, Ralph had no self-consciousness in public thinking but would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player."

William Golding Lord of the Flies

WORD OF THE DAY: "Brachiate"

Learned a new word the other day: Brachiate: verb. (of certain apes) move by using the arms to swing from branch to branch

I learned this word from a friend who studied anthropology in undergrad ... wish I had known of it while writing Peter Nimble!

THE CHOCOLATE WARS Quote #1

From Chapter One: "The coach looked like an old gangster: broken nose, a scar on his cheek like a stitched shoestring. He needed a shave, his stubble like slivers of ice."

- Robert Cormier The Chocolate Wars

The Interrobang

While going over Peter Nimble proofs with my editor, I came across the term "interrobang," which is the name for a combined question mark and exclamation point ("?!").  In the 1960s, some typeface smartypants even tried making it into a single character:

STANFORD WONG Quote #1

The protagonist on his fighting parents: "I shut my door and push a chair against it, then duck for cover under my blanket.  Still, it feels like every shot they take at each other passes through me first."

- Lisa Yee Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time

TALE DARK AND GRIMM Quote #2

From Chapter One: "Allow me to warn you now that, under any other circumstances, stealing a girl is about the worst way of winning her heart you could possibly cook up. ... But because this happened long ago, in a faraway land, it seems to have worked."

- Adam Gidwitz A Tale Dark and Grimm

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES Quote #1

"Who has more pockets than a magician?A boy. Whose pockets contain more than a magicians? A boy's."

- Ray Bradbury Something Wicked This Way Comes, ch. 49

TALE DARK AND GRIMM Quote #1

Perhaps the second greatest book dedication of all time: "For my parents. Obviously."

Adam Gidwitz, A Tale Dark and Grimm

PETER PAN Quote #2

  "Neverland had always begun to look a little dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose in it and spread, black shadows moved about in them, the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win."

-J.M. Barrie Peter Pan, ch. IV

PETER PAN Quote #1

  "Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by them. For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the event happened, that when they were in the wood they had met their dead father and had a game with him."

- J.M. Barrie Peter Pan ch. I

FACTOTUM Quote #2

A nice bit of description: "Creeping eyes open against the drowsy crust congealed in their corners ..."

- D. M. Cornish Factotum

FACTOTUM Quote #1

From Chapter Two: "'Well, hullo, me boy,' Craumpalin declared, making an easy showing but possessing a distinct air of a man interrupted."

- D. M. Cornish Factotum

LAMPLIGHTER Quote #1

From Chapter Thirteen: "'What did you think a life of adventure was?' She smiled condescendingly. "It is a life of violence.'"

- D. M. Cornish Lamplighter

FOUNDLING Quote #1

I learned a new definition for "Fiasco:" "Rossamund had seen had seen them before. In them he knew women kept their rouges, blushes and balms: the tools of beauty ... even a young lad like himself could not help but be amazed by the simple yet profound transformation. He did not think a little rosying of the cheeks and lips and whitening of the nose could be so flattering."

- D. M. Cornish Foundling, ch. 13

THE CUNNING MAN Quote #3

A Schoolboy Before a Test: "I knew that he prayed a great deal, of course for help in the examinations. But subsequent clinical experience has convinced me that God is not particularly interested in examinations, just as he won't be dragged into the Stock Market, or being a backer in show business."

- Robertson Davies The Cunning Man, ch. 13